editorNPR Digital Services RSS Generator 0.94NPR Digital Services RSS Generator 0.94Ella TaylorFri, 01 Dec 2017 00:52:37 +0000Ella Taylorhttp://apr.org
Ella TaylorIn the family drama The Tribes of Palos Verdes , in theaters this week, the warmly maternal actress Jennifer Garner plays a mother from hell. Not that her Sandy Mason is one of those ubiquitous gorgons who have eaten friends and family for dinner since movie time began, from Bette Davis's coldly bullying mater in 1942's Now, Voyager through the ice- queens in two incarnations of The Manchurian Candidate (1962 and 2004), all the way to (coming December 8th!) a wickedly funny and scary Allison Janney as Tonya Harding's monster mom in I, Tonya . No, Sandy's a more subtly drawn woman, a sharply intelligent but damaged soul starving for affection from her self-involved husband, who's dragged her and their teenaged twins to a wealthy Southern California enclave so as to hone his career as plastic surgeon to the stars. As a mother, though, Sandy is a disaster. By turns checked-out and needy, she neglects her daughter while desperately binding her son tightly to her as a substitute spouse.In Praise Of Difficult Mothers (And Their Difficult Daughters), Onscreen And Offhttp://apr.org/post/praise-difficult-mothers-and-their-difficult-daughters-onscreen-and
120502 as http://apr.orgThu, 23 Nov 2017 18:21:00 +0000In Praise Of Difficult Mothers (And Their Difficult Daughters), Onscreen And OffElla TaylorA guy walks into an Alaska bar at night. The bar is called Chums, and his two pals are deep in heated discussion about an upcoming election and the fabulous age of business dominance to come in its wake. The dialogue is not played for winks at the audience, and Sweet Virginia is not, now or later, one of those jokey neo-noirs that keeps poking the genre in the ribs. Next thing you know, a stranger — young, good-looking, intense — comes in demanding the Early Bird Special. When told, none too politely, that the kitchen is closed, the young man commits an act of efficient violence that leaves three men dead in this small town before the credits have rolled. The brutality we see is suggestive rather than visceral, and though more blood will be spilled before the close, the movie is driven less by action than by the expertly paced buildup of pervasive unease among friends and family of the deceased. At least one of the survivors, we learn early on, has a direct prior connection to the'Sweet Virginia': Small-Town Noir With A Slice Of Hopehttp://apr.org/post/sweet-virginia-small-town-noir-slice-hope
120152 as http://apr.orgThu, 16 Nov 2017 22:00:00 +0000'Sweet Virginia': Small-Town Noir With A Slice Of HopeElla Taylor"Can we please stop with the remakes of Murder on the Orient Express ?" I ask upon exiting Kenneth Branagh's fatally tepid new reading of the Agatha Christie classic. For my money, David Suchet already nailed the most satisfying Hercule Poirot we're ever likely to know. In the British television series Agatha Christie's Poirot (which aired on PBS in the States), if not the wholly unnecessary 2010 movie, Suchet's Belgian detective came to us as his own complicated loner — sly, prissy, compulsive, sexually ambiguous and with a thoroughly earned tragic vision of humankind, yet full of compassion for its individual membership. When Suchet's Poirot insisted he was happiest when alone, we believed him. But coming from Branagh's Poirot, there is room for doubt — and not only because his lips can barely move beneath a mustache so humongous it curls around corners, possibly in an attempt at a getaway. That hairy party favor — with Branagh behind it, incessantly cracking wise and foolish — leadsLatest 'Murder On The Orient Express' Is A Classic Whydoithttp://apr.org/post/latest-murder-orient-express-classic-whydoit
119796 as http://apr.orgThu, 09 Nov 2017 22:01:00 +0000Latest 'Murder On The Orient Express' Is A Classic WhydoitElla TaylorHaving cut an audacious path through any number of film genres, from Dazed and Confused to the animated Waking Life, the wonderfully gabby Before Sunrise / Before Sunset/Before Midnight trio all the way to his acclaimed Boyhood, Richard Linklater lands another smart one with Last Flag Flying . Though it won't rank among his best, this antic, heartfelt dramedy about the many wounds of war handily shows off the director's abiding delight in illuminating character through banter; it simultaneously beams a light into critical American moments past and present. Co-written with Darryl Ponicsan (The Last Detail) and loosely based on Ponicsan's 2005 novel, Last Flag Flying is a flagrantly populist road movie built around three Vietnam veterans meandering up the East Coast by train, car and truck to carry a coffin containing a son killed in Iraq to a hero's burial. The year is 2003, alive with footage of a disheveled Saddam Hussein flushed from his hidey-hole, and the meaning of war and heroismIn 'Last Flag Flying,' The Horror of War Is Brought Home — Literallyhttp://apr.org/post/last-flag-flying-horror-war-brought-home-literally
119407 as http://apr.orgThu, 02 Nov 2017 21:00:00 +0000In 'Last Flag Flying,' The Horror of War Is Brought Home — LiterallyElla TaylorWhen God's Own Country , a superb feature debut from British writer-director Francis Lee about a love affair between two male farmhands, drew wide acclaim at film festivals, it spawned comparisons with Brokeback Mountain . They're understandable but misleading, and not only because the time and place are different. God's Own Country is set in the West Yorkshire wilds where Lee grew up and still lives, and where sex is organic to the everyday flow of lives surrounded by animal activity. In the movie, sex is unapologetically visceral and carnal — it's all about male bodies, often naked, always beautiful — but if Lee has his feet firmly planted in the mucky soil of his youth, his spirit soars into the romantic blue heavens. At the outset, though, love is alien to his young protagonist, who has grown up in fierce suppression of any inner life at all. While his childhood friends go off to university, John Saxby (a splendidly surly, grunting Josh O'Connor) is left behind to look after thePent-Up Passions Go Free Range In 'God's Own Country'http://apr.org/post/pent-passions-go-free-range-gods-own-country
119025 as http://apr.orgThu, 26 Oct 2017 21:00:00 +0000Pent-Up Passions Go Free Range In 'God's Own Country'Ella TaylorIn a scene of startling beauty in Ai Weiwei's Human Flow , a group of refugees huddles together, with light bouncing off golden insulation blankets handed out by workers to warm them up as they arrive off a boat in Europe. Ai's work is often meant to provoke, but the shot isn't meant to plunder suffering for art's sake. It's a moment of noticing, in a gorgeous-looking documentary that never spares us the ugly, unspeakable miseries of forced migration. The film boasts no less than twelve cinematographers (among them the Chinese artist himself), which may be what it takes to track the planet's largest mass migration since World War II and its impact on Europe, the continent taking the brunt of absorbing (or not) refugees fleeing brutal wars around the globe. Human Flow is structured by aerial shots of beautiful expanses of land and sea in the Middle East, Africa and parts of Asia where civil conflicts take their toll. Intended or not, these vistas — punctuated by silent pans through'Human Flow' Offers A Searing Look At The Global Refugee Crisishttp://apr.org/post/human-flow-offers-searing-look-global-refugee-crisis
118365 as http://apr.orgFri, 13 Oct 2017 15:04:00 +0000'Human Flow' Offers A Searing Look At The Global Refugee CrisisElla TaylorUna , an intelligently talky, properly claustrophobic chamber piece directed by Benedict Andrews and adapted by Scottish playwright David Harrower from his 2005 stage play Blackbird , revisits a middle-aged man's past sexual abuse of a precocious adolescent when the victim confronts him many years later. In form and subject, if not in tone, the film recalls David Mamet's 1994 Oleanna , a stridently partisan polemic adapted from Mamet's play about a college professor's alleged sexual assault of a female graduate student. Played by Ben Mendelsohn and Rooney Mara, both fearless about assaying a pair of unlikable damaged goods, abuser and victim hammer away at one another non-stop in confined spaces; it's safe to say that Una is not a fun night at the movies in the narrow sense of the word. In fact it's a bummer, but a roomier, more humane bummer than Mamet's self-serving Oleanna , in which the cacophonous sound of a grinding male axe drowned out all complicating reflection. (BetweenIn The Powerful 'Una,' A Woman Wants Vengeance — And Morehttp://apr.org/post/powerful-una-woman-wants-vengeance-and-more
117975 as http://apr.orgThu, 05 Oct 2017 21:01:00 +0000In The Powerful 'Una,' A Woman Wants Vengeance — And MoreElla Taylor'Victoria And Abdul': Part Satire, Part Love Story, All Charminghttp://apr.org/post/victoria-and-abdul-part-satire-part-love-story-all-charming
117261 as http://apr.orgThu, 21 Sep 2017 21:00:00 +0000'Victoria And Abdul': Part Satire, Part Love Story, All CharmingElla TaylorA College-Bound Lad And His Unbound Dad In 'Brad's Status' http://apr.org/post/college-bound-lad-and-his-unbound-dad-brads-status
116950 as http://apr.orgThu, 14 Sep 2017 21:00:00 +0000A College-Bound Lad And His Unbound Dad In 'Brad's Status' Ella TaylorHome Again , a shambles of a first feature written and directed by Hallie Meyers-Shyer, purports to tell the story of a woman reinventing her life in Los Angeles as she confronts middle age. On more levels than one, though, the film is about the enduring potency of Hollywood connections. It wouldn't be worth mentioning that Meyers-Shyer comes from industry royalty but for the fact that this film would never have made it past a pitch meeting — still less attract the top-drawer likes of Reese Witherspoon, Michael Sheen and a very game Candice Bergen — without the cachet of her famous writer mother. Nancy Meyers made Something's Gotta Give , It's Complicated and a very good remake of The Parent Trap . Meyers Sr. also produced Home Again , which, not coincidentally, is a slapped-together knockoff of a Nancy Meyers movie. The long shadow that Hollywood casts on its spawn is one of several half-cooked themes that protrude from the plot. Right off the bat, Alice Kinney (Witherspoon, returningYou Can't Go 'Home Again' — Or At Least, You Shouldn'thttp://apr.org/post/you-cant-go-home-again-or-least-you-shouldnt
116621 as http://apr.orgThu, 07 Sep 2017 21:00:00 +0000You Can't Go 'Home Again' — Or At Least, You Shouldn'tElla TaylorAt my all-girls high school in London in the 1960s, colonial history was taught roughly as follows: "In 1947 India was granted independence from Great Britain. Civil strife continued between Hindus and Muslims in the new nations of India and Pakistan. And now, gehls, back to the Gardens of Tudor England." On the other hand: "History is written by the victors," reads the prefatory intertitle in Gurinder Chadha's Viceroy's House , a warm-hearted, ambitious period drama that rewrites a blood-soaked chapter of imperial decline as a struggle between upstairs and downstairs, with plenty of internecine warfare seething below the salt. In the movie, upstairs is British Empire, dwindling by the hour and represented by the gold-plated palace where successive British viceroys have ruled over a resource-rich subcontinent containing one-fifth of the world's population. Below stairs toils a hitherto servile, increasingly frisky staff made up of Hindus and Muslims whose relatively serene coexistence'Viceroy's House': A Warm-Hearted Look At The Sunset Of The British Empirehttp://apr.org/post/viceroys-house-warm-hearted-look-sunset-british-empire
116274 as http://apr.orgThu, 31 Aug 2017 21:00:00 +0000'Viceroy's House': A Warm-Hearted Look At The Sunset Of The British EmpireElla TaylorFor a short while, the French-made film Polina toes the line of traditional ballet narrative: a heroine's journey from exceptional promise through bundled hurdles, all the way to the triumph of the tutu. Then the movie takes a sharp left turn into a whole other fairy tale, a vibrantly watchable modern dance musical with bits of histrionic life thrown in and the chance to see Juliette Binoche strut some smooth moves of her own. The almighty tutu gets no more than a cameo as a soft bed for two young principal dancers whose hormones run wild. It's curtains for rigid Bolshoi orthodoxy as a young Russian ballerina on the cusp of stardom pries herself loose and goes her own way in life and art. Saint Petersburg ballerina Anastasia Shevtsova stars as Polina, a sinuous nymph with leprechaun eyes whose poor but ambitious parents thrust her into rigorous training with Bojinski (Aleksei Guskov), a craggy martinet and every inch the barking maestro who stalks through every ballerina myth worth itsA Dancer Spins From Classical Ballet To Modern Dance In 'Polina'http://apr.org/post/dancer-spins-classical-ballet-modern-dance-polina
115895 as http://apr.orgThu, 24 Aug 2017 21:01:00 +0000A Dancer Spins From Classical Ballet To Modern Dance In 'Polina'Ella TaylorThe production notes for Patti Cake$ describe the movie's heroine as "plain and plus-sized." Plus-sized she may be, but neither Patti Dombrowski, an aspiring rapper in her 20s, nor Danielle Macdonald, the gifted non-rapper who plays her, is plain in any sense unless your definition of beauty begins and ends with Angelina Jolie. The Australian actress, who by the way has expressive green eyes, a fetchingly unruly tangle of blonde curls and a relaxed ease in her own skin, was the best thing about Amy Berg's nerveless 2015 thriller, Every Secret Thing , in which she played an acerbic piece of teenaged work. And she's easily the best thing about Patti Cake$ , a sweet, conventional dramedy gussied up in the grit of New Jersey rap. We meet Patti tending bar, sweeping floors, and fielding an overload of other adult burdens in a working class suburb of New Jersey. Her mother, Barb, played with slatternly brio by cabaret artist and comedian Bridget Everett, is a former rocker who sings like an'Patti Cake$' i$ $weet But $lighthttp://apr.org/post/patti-cake-i-weet-light
115548 as http://apr.orgThu, 17 Aug 2017 21:28:00 +0000'Patti Cake$' i$ $weet But $lightElla TaylorDoffing a hasty prefatory cap to the crime stats and overflowing garbage of 1970s New York, Marc Webb's The Only Living Boy in New York soon withdraws to more glam pastures within. By which Webb and screenwriter Allan Loeb mean the amber-lit, opulent interiors where Manhattan's writers and artists gather to kvetch and preen. Not much writing or arting goes on here, but it is clear that these are creative types because they are extremely attractive and throw dinner parties where they gesture prettily with slender-stemmed wine glasses while drily quipping. At one such soiree fronted by happening couple Ethan and Judith (Pierce Brosnan and Cynthia Nixon, silver and bronze), clever banter sails around the table like flying saucers. Judith laughs proudly at a particularly pithy sally produced by her son Tom, also an aspiring writer. Tom, the only living boy, etc., is having issues even though he is played by Callum Turner, who resembles Eddie Redmayne cross-bred with a young Richard Gere'The Only Living Boy In New York': A Callow, Shallow Writer Makes Good http://apr.org/post/only-living-boy-new-york-callow-shallow-writer-makes-good
115168 as http://apr.orgThu, 10 Aug 2017 21:00:00 +0000'The Only Living Boy In New York': A Callow, Shallow Writer Makes Good Ella TaylorIn 4 Days in France , a mesmerizing road movie by first-time director Jerome Reybaud, a young gay Parisian named Pierre (Pascal Cervo) packs his bags at dawn and leaves his sleeping lover, Paul (Arthur Igual). Departing the capital for a radically unstructured odyssey around a rural France enchantingly free of glam movie-Frenchiness, Pierre is guided by his Grindr app, with Paul in irritable pursuit behind him. Think of this less as a high concept premise than a tender and serious-minded joke that laces together Pierre's random encounters with strangers both male and female, whose often grumpy wisdom will bring him a diffuse enlightenment he doesn't yet know he needs. Played by Cervo with an elusive solemnity that's comical and sad as needed, Pierre emerges as an iffy narrator of his own motives, though he catches on to his illusions early enough to toss a cherished manuscript out of his Alfa Romeo (sedan, not convertible) after saving it from the clutches of a girl thief. But Pierre'sWhen Sex Becomes A Grind(r): '4 Days In France'http://apr.org/post/when-sex-becomes-grindr-4-days-france
114829 as http://apr.orgThu, 03 Aug 2017 21:00:00 +0000When Sex Becomes A Grind(r): '4 Days In France'Ella TaylorThe British playwright Alan Bennett once remarked that people are more interesting when they are trying to be good than when they are being bad. That's certainly true of Menashe, a recently widowed Orthodox Jew struggling to raise his young son alone in a Hasidic enclave of Borough Park, Brooklyn. Though he can be a religious dogmatist when it comes to others, Menashe errs abundantly himself and complains routinely in Rodney Dangerfield mode, which sounds funnier in Yiddish. At times he seems to enjoy more fellow-feeling with the Latino workers at the grocery story where he works than with his fellow Jews. This extravagantly fractious fellow is played, in Joshua Z. Weinstein's sensitive drama Menashe , by Menashe Lustig, a Hasid who has never acted but whose comedic YouTube videos have enjoyed some public success. The movie is based on events in Lustig's life, and he's very good at playing an approximation of himself, by turns defensive, hostile, pleading, sweatily anxious — and around'Menashe': A Hasid Grows In Brooklynhttp://apr.org/post/menashe-hasid-grows-brooklyn
114408 as http://apr.orgThu, 27 Jul 2017 21:00:00 +0000'Menashe': A Hasid Grows In BrooklynElla TaylorIn a canny revision of one of literature's top nasty women, William Oldroyd's Lady Macbeth brings us a Gothic tale of a shackled young wife turned angry bird, wreaking havoc on all who cross her and plenty who don't. Set in rural Victorian England, the movie, which filters Shakespeare's toxic bride through a 19 th -century novella by Nikolai Leskov, minces neither word nor image laying out the forces that conspire to warp young Katherine Lester (Florence Pugh). We meet her in a chilly Northern England church, a dewy but apprehensive 17-year-old innocent newly married off — sold, actually — to a much older husband, Alexander (Paul Hilton). Quickly revealed as a drunken lout, the husband takes his cue from his father, Boris (Christopher Fairbank), a snarling rodent who subjects Katherine to arbitrary humiliations in the name of wifely devotion and Christian propriety. But fire runs through the veins of this girl, who's played by Pugh with a gimlet stare and head-tossing, impatient candor'Lady Macbeth': A New Bride Flouts The Rigid Rules Of Society — And Humanityhttp://apr.org/post/lady-macbeth-new-bride-flouts-rigid-rules-society-and-humanity
113688 as http://apr.orgThu, 13 Jul 2017 21:14:00 +0000'Lady Macbeth': A New Bride Flouts The Rigid Rules Of Society — And HumanityElla TaylorAmong the photographs featured in the voluminous archive of photographer Elsa Dorfman, there's a joyful selfie — taken in 1988 before either the word or the practice became a thing — of Dorfman and her frequent subject, Beat poet Allen Ginsberg. Arms linked and holding hands, the two friends stand side by side, grinning broadly in unself-conscious camaraderie. Ginsberg is less known for his chipper outlook than for his sonorous meditations on lost America, and that goes double for filmmaker Errol Morris ( The Fog of War , The Thin Blue Line ). But once you've seen The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman's Portrait Photography , Morris's charming portrait of the portraitist, you'll see that that photo tells us all we need to know about Dorfman's approach to art and life. It has nothing to do with finding Ginsberg's inner essence, or anyone else's in her collection of luminaries and just plain folks. Dorfman is interested in surfaces, though not in a surface way. Clocking in at a trim 76 minutes, The BThe Polaroid Photographer Who Captures 'The B-Side' Of Her Subjects' Liveshttp://apr.org/post/polaroid-photographer-who-captures-b-side-her-subjects-lives
112980 as http://apr.orgThu, 29 Jun 2017 21:00:00 +0000The Polaroid Photographer Who Captures 'The B-Side' Of Her Subjects' LivesElla TaylorWhile Clint Eastwood was busy playing a wounded Union soldier held at the pleasure of a bevy of Southern belles in Don Siegel's 1971 Civil War drama The Beguiled , the actor also found time to direct his first film, Play Misty for Me , in which he also starred as a disc jockey stalked by an unhinged female fan. Both films were visceral articulations of male paranoia about the sinister potential of repressed or oversexed women. Imagine such fighting talk in the hands of a woman filmmaker whose aesthetic draws heavily on the world of fashion. Best known for lushly visual meditations like The Virgin Suicides , Lost in Translation , and Marie Antoinette , this year Sofia Coppola became only the second woman since 1961 to win Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival for her take on The Beguiled . Though Coppola adapted her screenplay from the original novel by Thomas Cullinan, her interpretation also streams a sly subterranean dialogue with Siegel's nakedly badass reading. Coppola's TheA Wounded Union Soldier In A House Of Southern Women: 'The Beguiled'http://apr.org/post/wounded-union-soldier-house-southern-women-beguiled
112613 as http://apr.orgThu, 22 Jun 2017 21:00:00 +0000A Wounded Union Soldier In A House Of Southern Women: 'The Beguiled'Ella Taylor'Beatriz At Dinner' Skewers A House Full Of Well-Off Guestshttp://apr.org/post/beatriz-dinner-skewers-house-full-well-guests
111842 as http://apr.orgThu, 08 Jun 2017 21:00:00 +0000'Beatriz At Dinner' Skewers A House Full Of Well-Off Guests